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Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to receive the life-saving Covid-19 vaccine that the 69-year-old piano teacher queued overnight in a parking lot with hundreds of older people. She would not do it again.
Hadler said he waited 14 hours and that a fight almost broke out before dawn Tuesday when people lined up outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where officials were offering vaccines on a first-come, first-serve basis at 65 or older.
“I am afraid the event was a great entertainment,” he said. “I was petrified.”
The race to vaccinate millions of Americans has gotten off to a slower and messier start than public health officials and the leaders of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed expected.
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Andrew West / AP
Hundreds of people line up at the STARS complex in Fort Myers, Florida, to receive the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Overworked and underfunded state public health departments are scrambling to put together plans to administer vaccines. Counties and hospitals have taken different approaches, leading to long lines, confusion, frustration, and congested phone lines. A host of logistical concerns have complicated the process of trying to roll back the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asks for patience and notes that the supply of vaccines is limited.
“It may not be today for everyone, it may not be next week. But for the next few weeks, as long as we keep getting the supply, you will have a chance to get it, ”he said Wednesday.
Dr. Ashish Jha, a health policy researcher and dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, said the main problem is that states do not receive adequate financial or technical support from the federal government. Jha said that the Trump administration, primarily the Department of Health and Human Services, has caused states to fail.
Andrew West / AP
Overworked and underfunded state public health departments are scrambling to put together plans to administer vaccines.
“There is still a lot that states need to do,” he said, “but it takes a much more active role for the federal government than they have been willing to do. In large part they have told states: ‘This is your responsibility. Find out. ‘”
Delays in reporting on vaccination figures partly explain why many states are not meeting their year-end goals, but officials blame logistical and financial hurdles for the slowness.
Many states lack the money to hire staff, pay overtime, or reach the public. The equipment needed to keep vaccines cold complicates their distribution. Additionally, providers must track vaccinations to have enough to dispense the second needed doses 21 days after the first.
Dr. James McCarthy, medical director at Memorial Hermann in Houston, said the hospital system has administered about half of the roughly 30,000 doses it has received since Dec. 15.
The system had to create a plan from scratch. Among other things, administrators had to ensure that everyone in the vaccination areas could socially distance themselves, and they had to set a 15-minute observation period for each patient so recipients could be watched for any side effects.
“We can’t just hand it out like it’s candy,” McCarthy said.
Andrew West / AP
“It reminded me of the 1980s, when you had to call a radio station to be the 10th person to call to get tickets to a concert,” said a US resident during the vaccination process.
Pasadena, California, is vaccinating its firefighters in groups of 50 after their two-day shifts are over so they can recover during their four days off. “We don’t want the majority of our workforce, if they experience side effects, to be left out at the same time,” said city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian.
In South Carolina, state lawmakers are wondering why the state has administered only 35,158 of the 112,125 doses of Pfizer it had received as of Wednesday. State Sen. Marlon Kimpson said officials told him that some frontline healthcare workers refuse to get vaccinated while others are on vacation.
Lin Humphrey, a college professor whose 81-year-old mother lives with him in a high-rise apartment in Miami, said it took him about 80 calls to call someone at a Miami Beach hospital that began inoculating older people last week. . .
“It reminded me of the 80s, when you had to call a radio station to be the 10th person to call to get tickets to a concert,” Humphrey said. “When I finally finished, I cried on the phone with the woman.”
For the past few weeks, health officials in the Trump administration had talked about the goal of shipping enough vaccines by the end of the month to inoculate 20 million Americans. But it’s unclear whether the United States will hit that mark.
Army Gen. Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed’s director of operations, said Wednesday that 14 million doses had been shipped across the country so far. Monitoring by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that, as of Wednesday, nearly 2.8 million injections had been administered.
Authorities said there is a delay in reporting the vaccines, but they are still happening more slowly than expected. Perna predicted that the pace will pick up next week.
“We agree that number is lower than we expected,” said Dr. Moncef Slaoui, Warp Speed’s chief scientist.
Andrew West / AP
Many states lack the money to hire staff, pay overtime, or reach the public. The equipment needed to keep vaccines cold complicates their distribution.
On Tuesday, US President-elect Joe Biden said the Trump administration is “falling behind” and vowed to pick up the pace once he takes office on January 20. In early December, Biden promised to distribute 100 million shots in the first 100 days. of your administration.
Jha said Biden’s goal is ambitious but achievable.
“It will not be easy if what they collect on January 20 is an infrastructure that is not ready to run on the first day,” he said.
In Tennessee, health officials hoped to reach the goal of dispensing 200,000 doses by the end of the year, but shipping delays could prevent that from happening. Health officials said the state received 20,300 doses on Tuesday that were expected to arrive last week.
“There is nothing we could have done about it,” said Dr. Lisa Piercey, Tennessee health commissioner.
